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T-Mobile to offer free unlimited international data, texts

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Re: T-Mobile to offer free unlimited international data, texts

#111

Post by jasonkester »

Good to hear. US carriers do a terrible job of dealing with anything international. It's as though they're honestly surprised that anybody would ever want to leave the USA or make a phone call to anybody in another country.

An example: I flew to the 'states this weekend. Once on the ground, I topped up my American (T-Mobile) sim with a month's worth of credit. (There was no way to do this from abroad since their sims don't work there at all, and their website has a ridiculous country redirect even from your account page).

At the airport, on the way home, I sent a text to my wife letting her know I was on the way. It failed.

I tried again to various permutations of the French number, with absolutely no success. Googling around, it seems that you can't do that with t-mobile. You can't even get them to turn it on, since their "international" packages only work with their contract services. Not just roaming, but even placing a phone call to another country is impossible with pre-paid t-mobile. Sure enough, landing in Paris, the phone was dead dead dead. No "welcome to France" message. No extortionate international roaming charges. Just no ability to make calls at all.

I had to pop my UK sim back in just to be able to use the phone again.

I'm looking forward to the first company (in any country) that truly gets all this. They'll get my business, as well as pretty much all the business from anybody who travels at all.

Re: T-Mobile to offer free unlimited international data, texts

#112

Post by NemesorZandrak »

This will be amazing in Europe. From jan In Eu all carriers have to drop roaming charges and people now are traveling exponentially more than they used to 10-15 years ago. This is big. I know everyone focuses on USA and china bit old continent still has potential ;)

Re: T-Mobile to offer free unlimited international data, texts

#113

Post by scalenemuscles »

skrause wrote: post #103
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #27

And this is why competition and effective government regulation[1] are fantastic things. If T-Mobile wasn't in a distant fourth place in the US market, or if they'd been acquired by AT&T we wouldn't be seeing this, nor would we see Verizon and AT&T introduce their own versions of T-Mobile's JUMP program. [1] http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/19/att-tmobile-merger-dead/

This is not really a prime example of good competition. The only reason T-Mobile can do this is because they are basically getting a massive subsidization from the German mother company, the German Telecom, who is behaving in its German home market just like AT&T behaves in the USA. As soon as T-Mobile gains any significant market share it will be just like the others.

So how exactly does getting subsidized by a mother company to offer a compelling package not equal good competition?

Re: T-Mobile to offer free unlimited international data, texts

#114

Post by Idiosyncra3y »

mortenjorck wrote: post #86
moosehawk wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even less if you don't talk much: http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-plans ($30/m for 5GB of 4G, unlimited text, 100 minutes)

That's a rather amazing deal if you do most of your talking on VOIP, but I'm left wondering what this disclaimer means: This plan is only available for devices purchased from Wal-Mart or devices activated on T-Mobile.com It seems to imply device restrictions.

I have this on my Nexus 4. You can either order a sim online or (as I couldn't buy it with a card registered to a P.O. box) buy a 20$ phone at walmart and swap the sim into your device.

No device restrictions.

Re: T-Mobile to offer free unlimited international data, texts

#115

Post by narenl »

skrause wrote: post #103
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #27

And this is why competition and effective government regulation[1] are fantastic things. If T-Mobile wasn't in a distant fourth place in the US market, or if they'd been acquired by AT&T we wouldn't be seeing this, nor would we see Verizon and AT&T introduce their own versions of T-Mobile's JUMP program. [1] http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/19/att-tmobile-merger-dead/

This is not really a prime example of good competition. The only reason T-Mobile can do this is because they are basically getting a massive subsidization from the German mother company, the German Telecom, who is behaving in its German home market just like AT&T behaves in the USA. As soon as T-Mobile gains any significant market share it will be just like the others.

The U.S consumer benefits regardless. if the German taxpayer or German customer of a monopoly subsidizes the U.S consumer that is a German market issue.

Your second point has some merit though: that once they gain significant market share in the U.S, T-mobile can become anti-customer. But T-mobile's prepaid plans and now this international texting gambit might force other carriers to follow suit before T-mobile gets to that significant market share. At that point T-mobile cannot afford to become anti-customer because other carriers would have started matching T-mobile's pro-customer offers in the meantime.

Re: T-Mobile to offer free unlimited international data, texts

#116

Post by masklinn »

praxeologist wrote: post #105
masklinn wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the gov't didn't have its hand in this space for so long, there would be no massive AT&T I didn't expect to see revisionism in here, let alone of such magnitude. Without government intervention, there would be no AT&T, nor would there be alternate carriers. There would only be Ma Bell. And don't bullshitting about Ma Bell's regulated monopoly, the regulation was put in place because Bell was already a monopoly b…

How about no Ma Bell in the first place... Grampa Graham got his telephone patent in 1876 then in the next 18 years there were 600 lawsuits to defend over 900 patents (state grants of monopoly). When these patents expired, there were soon 80 competing companies which captured 5% of the market, rising to over 3,000 companies with over 50% of the market by 1900. AT&T then lobbied for its monopoly status back, saying th…

Great, more revisionism.

> When these patents expired, there were soon 80 competing companies which captured 5% of the market, rising to over 3,000 companies with over 50% of the market by 1900.

And starting in 1907 and the return of Vail, Bell started massively buying them out, attracting the attention of the Justice Department and leading to the Kingsbury Commitment. Kingsbury was essentially repealed 8 years later by the Willis Graham Act, which more or less removed the Commitment's regulatory barriers for acquisition by AT&T, by shifting all oversight to the ICC's rubber-stamping.

> Then during WW1, this monopoly was given "for reasons of national security". If you think that the monopoly came about by market forces then government came to save us, yes there is some revision needed.

The monopoly was already there, Bell was temporarily nationalized during WW1.

> AT&T then lobbied for its monopoly status back, saying the telephone "by the nature of its technology would operate most efficiently as a monopoly providing universal service."

And this was given in 1921 by the Willis-Graham, which removed the regulatory hurdles put in place in 1913 when Bell was already a monopoly or near-monopoly.

Re: T-Mobile to offer free unlimited international data, texts

#117

Post by raverbashing »

skrause wrote: post #103
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #27

And this is why competition and effective government regulation[1] are fantastic things. If T-Mobile wasn't in a distant fourth place in the US market, or if they'd been acquired by AT&T we wouldn't be seeing this, nor would we see Verizon and AT&T introduce their own versions of T-Mobile's JUMP program. [1] http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/19/att-tmobile-merger-dead/

This is not really a prime example of good competition. The only reason T-Mobile can do this is because they are basically getting a massive subsidization from the German mother company, the German Telecom, who is behaving in its German home market just like AT&T behaves in the USA. As soon as T-Mobile gains any significant market share it will be just like the others.

I think you mean Deutsche Telekom (yes, I agree with it behaving like AT&T)

At least their competitors "get" more things better than them, so for the most part they're not even an option.

Re: T-Mobile to offer free unlimited international data, texts

#118

Post by corin_ »

jasonkester wrote: post #111

Good to hear. US carriers do a terrible job of dealing with anything international. It's as though they're honestly surprised that anybody would ever want to leave the USA or make a phone call to anybody in another country. An example: I flew to the 'states this weekend. Once on the ground, I topped up my American (T-Mobile) sim with a month's worth of credit. (There was no way to do this from abroad since their sims…

Vodafone (UK) are awesome within Europe - when I am abroad I pay £2.50/day to use my normal price plan abroad (so I still get unlimited minutes/texts, and 6GB data, for no cost other than that daily fee). For calling European numbers they aren't quite as good, but for £5/month the prices drop from £1/min to between 5p and 20p/min depending on the type of number I'm calling.

Outside Europe they're still awful though, something like £1.50/min to call to America/Asia from UK, and same for both placing and receiving calls when in those continents.

Last time I was in America I picked up a cheap phone at a supermarket that gave me 1c/min phonecalls to anywhere in the US or even abroad - including calling UK mobile phones. That saved me a lot of money.

Re: T-Mobile to offer free unlimited international data, texts

#119

Post by car »

nknighthb wrote: post #24
quink wrote: post #8

Just in case anyone hasn't noticed this: > While the data is free, it won't be particularly fast. Customers can expect network speeds at around the same level that they get in the US after they are throttled. Chief Marketing Officer Mike Sievert said the average speed customers would get would be around 128 kilobits a second. Think of it more of an extension of the Kindle 3G business model rather than anything else.…

For me, that's not the painful part. The painful part is the six week limit. When I was in Taiwan, I was handed a prepaid dumbphone and a 4G wireless hotspot with iffy battery life and some indoor coverage issues. Being able to send/receive SMSs and brief phone calls with my smartphone's home number, and keep up on email and light browsing on my own phone without being at the mercy of the hotspot, would have been ver…

If you get one of the Blackberry UMA models or a T-Mobile branded phone with 'Wifi calling', those phones will work over Wifi anywhere in the world, at no extra cost.

In other words, you can make and receive voice calls on your regular number, and the same for SMS via WLAN.

Re: T-Mobile to offer free unlimited international data, texts

#120

Post by adrinavarro »

NemesorZandrak wrote: post #112

This will be amazing in Europe. From jan In Eu all carriers have to drop roaming charges and people now are traveling exponentially more than they used to 10-15 years ago. This is big. I know everyone focuses on USA and china bit old continent still has potential ;)

Huh?

Roaminng charges are hardly going anywhere. And that would be in July 1st… And countries have opposed the measure.

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